Te Papa’s Colossal Squid On The Move

Te Papa’s colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis
hamiltoni, will be moved from its preservation tank into a
purpose built display tank on Wednesday 6 August. The
process will be webcast live on Te Papa’s website
www.tepapa.govt.nz/squid. Te Papa experts will be manning the
blog to provide updates and answer questions and the film
crew for the Discovery Channel US’s documentary will be in
attendance.

The colossal squid move is likely to take
about 6 hours. The process involves draining 6000 litres of
toxic formalin solution from the preserving tank and rinsing
the specimen with fresh water. The squid will be turned
over, enabling scientists to remove eggs through a rip in
the specimen’s mantle and then repair the rip, ready for
display. Finally the specimen will be hoisted into the
display tank with 5000 litres of propylene glycol (an
antimicrobial fluid used for storing preserved specimens).
The display tank will be stored in the Tory St facility
until it can go on public display in the exhibit space in Te
Papa at the end of the year.

Te Papa staff investigated
the various display methods of other squids around the world
before deciding on the specifications of the display tank.
The tank is made from stainless steel with a concave acrylic
lid and is approximately 4.6m long, 1.6m wide and 0.9m deep.
This will allow the specimen to be dramatically lit from
inside the tank, and provide the clearest view of the
squid.

Te Papa is delighted to acknowledge the support of
the Discovery Channel in the preservation of the colossal
squid specimen. Their support included the entire thaw and
examination process being filmed by Natural History New
Zealand for a Discovery Channel in-depth documentary
programme to be released worldwide in late 2008.

The
colossal squid was landed by the New Zealand fishing vessel,
the San Aspiring, in the Ross Sea in 2007 and gifted to Te
Papa by the Ministry of Fisheries. Stored for a year in a
freezer in Te Papa’s Tory St facility, it was defrosted in
April 2008 and examined by a team of international
scientists. The webcast of the examination (and the
dissection of two giant squid and a smaller damaged colossal
squid) was the first of its kind in the world and attracted
up to 2400 simultaneous viewers each day and 450,000 visits
to Te Papa’s website. The 2007 female colossal squid is
the most massive invertebrate ever discovered, weighing in
at 495kg. It is 4.2 metres long and holds the record for the
world’s largest eye measuring 27cm in
diameter.

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